Jump to content

Hellraiser97

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    270
  • Joined

Everything posted by Hellraiser97

  1. Late change of plans and it looks like we are going to Chicago to visit friends for the last week of July. I've been to Chicago once for work in January. That sucked ass. I'm told Chicago is awesome though, and that either it has beaches or there are beaches reasonably close. My 6yo and 3yo want a beach as part of the summer vacation, so I'm trying to accommodate. What does Surly recommend? (besides drinking heavily, which is a given).
  2. I'm not sure your wife is going to like you drinking and whoring again!
  3. I'm not worried about my retirement (socially/work, financially might be a different story), I'm the type that is always involved in something, Church, Texas Exes, whatever, so I'm sure I'll find something to keep me social and keep my brain engaged. My father on the other hand, I don't know what to do with him. He's 73 and literally, I think his brain is atrophying and has been for some time. He last held a full time job when he was 49. He got laid off and financially secure enough that he could just do some consulting on the side, which he did on and off for about 8 years. He finally admitted he was retired around 2002. His last full time job was as CFO of a fairly large jewelry manufacturer. He got canned shortly before it went in the toilet. He could have found another full time job and worked easily another 10 years at his max earning capacity, but like I said, he didn't need to. Instead, he and my mom bought a travel trailer and they traveled anywhere from 3-6 months a year as the consulting became less and less. They loved those trips and as he likes to tell it, hit 46 of the lower 48, plus several parts of Canada. I could see that his mental capacity was decreasing even then. Outside of managing his investments and planning his next trip, he just didn't have any intellectual stimulation. He eventually started volunteering with the AARP to do taxes (he's a CPA). That's good, but it's only about 6 weeks total a year. Part of me has always felt that it was a mistake for him to retire so early, regardless of how much they enjoyed their travel, but then my mom died about 2 years ago. She'd been sick for close to 2 years (F Cancer). In retrospect, if he had worked until 65, they'd have been a hell of a lot richer, but they would have only had 2-3 years of travel time. Would his brain be in better shape? Almost definitely, but is that worth not having those nearly 20 years of travel? If he was objective enough to admit what's going on with his brain, I think he'd say it was worth it. The question though is what to do with him now? He's spent 2 years liquidating his house in anticipation of moving .... somewhere. He wants to be near a university so he can attend cultural and intellectual things, but he really doesn't like Austin, where he actually would have a good in on those things. My brother and I have contemplated involving him more in our business (Home building), but he doesn't want a full time job and frankly with his speed, or lack there of, combined with his propensity to launch into hour long stories, I'm not sure we could survive his help! He alternatively berates us for 'never taking his advice' or 'not asking for his help', when in reality we did ask for his help a couple times and only once was he really interested. So, yeah, not sure what to do with him. Haven't read through this thread yet as its fairly long, but I'm going to and see if maybe I can pick up some ideas. I fell like his brain would recover if he were simply engaged in something, as his physical health is largely fine.
  4. Yeah, they aren't fucking around this year. I'm on the 11th for my personal. Haven't received the notices yet on our projects.
  5. Well, she obviously was in good company with many of the black community leaders then!
  6. Just started reading Mistborn since I liked Sanderson's finish out of Wheel of Time. Not far enough in to have an opinion yet. Also listening to Steamborn, mainly because for one Audible Credit, I got three books and it was well rated. First 6-7 chapters seemed kind of boring, but its picked up and I like the Steampunk setting.
  7. Got my 'offer' from the county yesterday - down 0.3%. No thanks, see you in August Fuck OU
  8. Sanderson said he had enough material that he could have done 3 more books out of what became the last book. Part of me would have liked to of seen that, but it probably just would have been too much. It's a shame Jordan never did the other two prequels. A lot of people were expressed interest in books from the 4th age, but I'm glad its not going to happen. While it could be cool, I remember what happened with Dragonlance and how bad those novels got. It took a bit for me to get into it and frankly, I wasn't completely hooked even at the end of the first book. I liked it, but it just didn't seem anything overly special. I could have stopped there and been satisfied. Ultimately, based on the reputation, and my desire to have something to occupy my time in the car for the next 2 years, I pushed through. Very glad I did, thought reading nearly straight through, there are plenty of spots where it seems repetitive or it just drags. Overall though, I think its worth the investment.
  9. And just finished the Wheel of Time. Man, that was a great read! I thought Sanderson did a great job. He tied up just about everything. I googled one thing from the end and found a chat he did at torbooks. Turns out most of the things he left open ended Jordan had left in his notes that that was supposed to be that way!
  10. They put up a mesh in front of the studs before drywall then blow in loose batts insulation through small holes. It get really compacted and is nearly as good as spray foam. Fuck OU
  11. With the energy code in Austin now, you pretty much have to do spray foam ceilings and at least blown in bats in the walls to meet the code. Fuck OU
  12. Yeah, as I got through the last of the Jordan Books, I had to listen to one, then take a break and listen to something else, between each one. Just seemed a lot of repetition of scenarios and I found myself saying "Not this shit again!" Still liked them, but hard to do back to back. I've been listening to the series for about a year and a half or so now. It's something like 400+ hours.
  13. I'm listening to the last book right now.
  14. That sounds a bit high but I guess it depends on your insurance. I think it’s more because people freak out about large payments but put it in terms of per month and they don’t. That’s how all of mine has been Fuck OU
  15. True, but that will be entertaining and we’re fucked already so why not? Fuck OU
  16. The only way the city council will get its head out of its ass is if things get so bad with prices and traffic they have no other viable choice. And even then, they still might not, but at least, unlike now, there will be a chance. Bring on Amazon!
  17. Get the gift certs, don't lose anything that way. All the shit I put in my lawn the past couple weeks that I had to actually pay for, I bought with a Home Depot gift certificate I got that way.
  18. I watered it, but I think I had some type of fungus. I've now installed rainwater barrels (that I got for free of course from a friend) so I can water it more and not pay for it.
  19. I still use a coat hanger antenna for my TV. Of course, it gets better reception than any one I ever bought before, but I think I'm more pleased with the fact that I spent less than $8 on it.
  20. My wife berates me for a being a cheap bastard. I revel in it, and I may have reached a new level. I recently took down some really over grown bushes and spent yesterday putting a new garden in place. Putting the edging in, I had to remove a decent chunk of grass that had grown into the area. On my front lawn, along the street, its dead as fuck. Put some sod in last year but it didn't take. Was going to sod again after putting some lawn soil down, but thought, hey I have perfectly good grass in that garden! Spent the after noon cutting out the garden grass and planting it as plugs (St Augustine) in the dead area. My wife was on the porch just shaking her head at me.
  21. If there's another option than tapa for viewing mobile, I'm open. I've used chrome on my iPhone but fuck that was difficult to do.
  22. I've had a CPAP since 2005. My quality of sleep before was complete shit. Now, I can't deal with sleeping without it. Get tested.
  23. So I realize I'm late to the game on this, but figured I'd put it out there before a blew a shit ton of money. Situation: Wife went back to work in January 2016. Her job blows and with her commute (going from Circle C to the Domain) she's borderline useless in getting the kids to/from school/child care. I'm working from home, so my schedule is somewhat flexible, except that sometimes I have to be on site for something and then its not, but all this shit ends up falling on me. 3yo is at Primrose, so her child care is set up. 6yo is just completing kindergarten at public school. Last year she was at Primrose so summer child care was taken care of. Over the two week Christmas break, I had the bright idea that I could manage her at home while I worked since its usually super slow in our business (Construction) at that point and lots of her friends on the street would be at home as well. That was a complete fucking disaster as my partner was out of town for his honeymoon and due to some backups, a shit load of work was being done on one of our custom projects. My wife was able to help some the second week as her office was closed, but it still didn't work. Regardless, I knew it would never work for the whole summer. So for Spring Break, we did a camp at Lifetime fitness. She liked it and good news/bad news was that she was pretty wiped out at the end of the day. So now we come to summer. I've signed her up for a few camps that I know she wants to do and we're taking a family vacation for a bit over a week in July. I'm leery, however, of putting her in non-stop camps for the 10 weeks we're not on vacation. That just screams burn out to me, and fuck the prices on a lot of these things are high for a week! I had a stay at home mom, so I have no experience with this growing up. My wife basically stayed at a friends house or her older brother watched her. We have no family that can help out unfortunately. So what is the experience of Surly in this? Those of you that are single parents or dual income, do you just do non-stop camps? Is it possible to hire a care giver but just for the summer? This whole thing is just beating me down. Thanks for any advice.
  24. So for the science tards like myself here, would that amount of gravity in an area of space make life, at least as we know it, impossible? IE, is there basically a region of space with hundreds of galaxies, each with billions of stars, where not a single planet likely supports life?
  25. I’m just amazed at the number of dumbasses that lose their pets. Sure cats are just assholes but if your dog runs off at the first chance it gets maybe you should look into some training? My 3 yo opened the front door on Saturday and our dog apparently slipped out. I mowed, weed wacked and fertilized our backyard before I noticed that the dog wasn’t inside. Went it front and she was just sitting in the garage chilling Then there’s my neighbor that lets his dog roam off leash and twice he’s barged into my house when I’ve opened the door. Fuck OU
×
×
  • Create New...